‘Employees will ‘be more productive with AI’
It is a phrase that I imagine almost all business leaders have heard at one point or another. Maybe from the vendors or suppliers, possibly from those within IT, and potentially from the business. But, is ‘productivity increase’ a sufficient justification for the deployment of an AI solution or tool? On its own, no. It is paramount to creating a business case that says ‘it’ll be amazing’. So, why are so many companies signing off licensing when they are missing the key business case?
Vendors have done an amazing job of selling the concept to the world, and don’t for a second think that this is an anti-AI article. But this technology and the hype surrounding it, has encouraged people to bypass the simple step of ‘What are your pain points? What are you wanting to solve or improve?’ These are the standard questions that have, over the decades, afforded consultants so much opportunity to make money. If you want AI, you feel it is absolutely the right direction, and you can’t answer those simple questions, then it is time to put the brakes on and have a think. Why? Simple really, if you do not have a clear vision of what you want to do or where you want to go, you cannot justify the spend.
All too often, Financial Directors and CFOs are finding themselves being asked to sign off on AI investment off the back of a desire. If you can’t articulate why AI is needed, you can’t articulate what success looks like, and therefore you can’t go back to your FD or CFO, and prove any return on investment. The other thing to take into account here is that productivity increases are very nice, but unless there is a measurable increase in output that directly leads to a hard cost saving or increase in revenue, then productivity increases are not much more than a vanity project. It is lovely having employees who can operate at a higher rate of output, but what happens to the reclaimed time? Do your employees deliver additional work, or do they deliver the same work in less time? If it is the latter, and no additional work is being executed, then you have introduced productivity leakage into your organisation.
Measuring employee productivity is not easy; well, not in any meaningful way, but it is something that needs to be taken into account.
Before you sign off on your AI investment spend, take a moment or two to go back to the old-school ways and look at what you are fixing, why you are fixing it, and how you are going to measure the financial impact of it. If you can’t honestly answer those points with satisfactory answers that stand up to scrutiny, then you are probably going to increase your costs, but not benefit the business. It is very easy to justify something in our minds when we want it.
